


...and one for your dreams.

by winterwinterwinter



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 13:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16996101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwinterwinter/pseuds/winterwinterwinter
Summary: peggy gets a second chance.





	...and one for your dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> this goes out to my friend, the sepsis legend.

"you only live twice, or so it seems  
one life for yourself, and one for your dreams.  
you drift through the years and life seems tame,  
'til one dream appears and love is its name."

"you only live twice," nancy sinatra.

 

 

**i.**

 

he was a rough-looking boy. when peggy first saw him, on his knees in the gravel in the alley behind the shops, he had an ugly, half-healed slice across his forehead and his face was all scuffed up and dirty. he had a mean look on his face, almost like he would bite her if she got too close, like a cornered dog. but she could see right through him. he was needing someone, too. just like her.

she tried to talk to him, but he just stared. “can you hear me?” she said eventually. “sweetheart?”

he shook his head, raised his hand and spelled something out. peggy watched him, and grinned. “well,” she said. “okay then.”

 

**ii.**

 

peggy picked it up fairly easy. it took doing - what didn’t - but she got a hang of it. she spent a few evenings in the library, tucked into a dark corner, hidden from the eyes of luverne. she learned the alphabet, numbers, and some key words. conversational words, learned in sets. day, night. yes, no. inside, outside. with, without. hello, goodbye.

the next time she caught him snooping around the alleyway behind the shops, she was ready.

he stared her down from his spot on the ground, crouching, hands feeling for something. lost coins, maybe? she smiled wide and waved. “hi!” she said, before slowly, carefully spelling her own name: P-E-G-G-Y.

he looked startled, and maybe even more defensive than he had before. his brow was heavy over his eyes, and he regarded her with skepticism - a look she was too familiar with.

_friend,_ she said, pointing at herself.

he stood. he wasn’t terribly big. peggy didn’t know kids well - didn’t have any in her life - but he couldn’t be more than, what? nine or ten? he looked scrawny, thin - underfed? that would explain the time she’d seen him running from the grocery store, one of the employees shouting after him, threats of punishment and violence.

he raised his hand, like the last time they’d met. he raised his hand and started forming letters: W-E-S. wes?

_your name?_ peggy said.

he nodded once, raising his fist and rocking it, before he turned and ran down the alley. peggy watched him, his feet kicking up dirt, his little tan jacket flapping behind him.

 

**iii.**

 

peggy still had the nightmares. almost every night. she’d be settled down in bed by nine-thirty or ten, and at one in the morning she’d wake up gasping, or crying, or screaming.

at the store, in her magazines, she watched the fashion slowly change. she’d grab a shirt from the rack and wonder, would ed wear this? she’d sit down to watch the television at night and think, would ed laugh at this?

peggy wondered if there was a world, some version of herself out there in the ether, where she never hit that gerhardt boy outside the waffle hut. in that world, she went home to ed with a perfect windshield, and they ate tater tots and hamburger helper and when they fucked she didn’t take the birth control for once. she didn’t try to force lifespring and self-actualization down his throat, and they used that money to pay for the shop.

if there was another world, maybe they had a brood of towheaded children by now. little screaming angels that would tear peggy’s body apart and bring a smile to ed’s face. a brood of pudgy little boys and girls, with peggy’s complexion and ed’s sad little eyes, named after their parents, for lack of any better ideas: nora and frank and lorraine. maybe they had a big house with a yard, toys scattered across the grass. or maybe they were still crammed into the little white house ed loved so much, the place of his childhood.

peggy pondered this, sipping tea and shivering in her nightgown on the porch at midnight, ed blumquist’s house was simultaneously empty and full - only peggy there to haunt the halls in waking life, but bursting with ghosts. the ghosts of ed’s childhood, he and his best friend, tim, shrieking as they played. the ghost of ed himself, tinkering with the sink. the ghost of rye gerhardt, snarling in the garage. all the sins, and the specters and shadows of what peggy once had.

it was driving her mad, but she couldn’t leave.

 

**iv.**

 

people gave peggy a wide berth.

they didn’t understand her. had they ever, in this small town? “ooh, i’d love t’go t’california,” she used to say to them, “ya know, see the palm trees and the beach, the ocean.” and they’d laugh a little and say _sure._

the people of luverne grew in place, like trees. they didn’t move from their spots, didn’t sever their roots. they didn’t wonder what else was out there. and when the boys came home from war, and told everyone all that was out there was death and violence and the worst of humanity, luverne doubled down. luverne was a forest, and peggy was lost. had been all her life.

and after all that, driving home with a man through her windshield and dragging ed into it, toppling the dominoes of death and destruction… people gave peggy a wide berth.

some must’ve felt bad for her. she still had ladies sitting in her chair at the salon (not betsy solverson, who peggy saw very rarely anymore, wearing all manner of hats), which had taken her back after some begging. some must’ve felt bad, because, mixed in with the blank stares and the scowls, she’d get pitying smiles all over town, and sometimes the guys at the deli counter at the supermarket slipped her extras. she pretended not to notice, but she did. she always did.

peggy should’ve left. a long time ago, she should’ve left, before all of it. should’ve run away from aunt agnes’s farm the day she arrived, and gone to join the circus. peggy should’ve left. but the trial ended, and she’d played the jury like a fiddle. she’d been the best version of herself: cunning and manipulative. how could this silly little lady be responsible for all that destruction? because she wasn’t, and she knew it. it was so much more than just peggy blumquist, driving home with a hooligan through her windshield. it was bigger than her - it was those gerhardts, and mike milligan and kansas city, and the indian and the aliens, but if she told them that last one, doubtless they would’ve tossed her in an asylum - but everyone else was dead. and someone needed to take the blame. so what could she do, but pretend in order to save what she had left - herself?

peggy should’ve left, but she couldn’t. she’d trace her hand over the spot where ed once laid beside her and cry, some mornings when she was so cold by herself. she couldn’t leave him again. not like that. not alone. not yet.

 

**v.**

 

the next time they met, it was at night.

peggy had been the last at the salon. she liked to lock up, savored the silence, which was different from the silence that filled her mausoleum of a house. she finished sweeping up, checking that all the machines were off, all the curlers and irons and whatnot unplugged. she was walking out, and there curled up on the stoop was little wes, his back to her.

she carefully crouched down next to him, and gently set her hand on his shoulder. he didn’t flinch, or jump, or even look at her. he leaned into her touch as if he’d been doing it all his life, and peggy felt her heart melt, and thought that for once in her life she understood the idea of the maternal instinct.

peggy gasped when she got a good look at him and saw the bruises, the scrapes. he looked so tired, and so weary, and so little, sitting there curled up beside her. their eyes met.

_who did that?_ she said, gesturing timidly toward his bruises.

wes sniffed, and glanced down at his feet. peggy noticed he was only wearing socks. _dad,_ he said.

_do you have a mom?_ she said.

wes shook his head and leaned back into her, laying his head on her chest. she tugged him onto her lap and wrapped both arms around him, mindful of his bruises. one hand held his head under her chin, the other clutching around his side.

“well, ya do now, sweetie,” she mumbled, pressing her cheek to his hair.

 

**vi.**

 

peggy took him home.

she didn’t know what to feed him - didn’t know what to feed herself, most days - so she made him some toast and an egg. plain, good food, easy to make and easy to stomach.

he sat at her kitchen table eating, sipping carefully at the water she’d given him, looking like he could fall apart at any moment, as if he was held together with string. but, somehow, he stayed strong, eyes dry.

_will need help,_ peggy said after some time, _with A-S-L._

wes stared up at her. he had beautiful green eyes, unlike any that peggy had seen before. _why?_ he said.

peggy rose from her seat across from him, rounded the table. she knelt on the floor beside his chair and tapped at her mouth. “sweetie, you’re gonna stay here with me now,” she said. “only if ya want to. i don’t need more trouble with th’law, and kidnappin’ is pretty serious.”

wes nearly fell out of his seat, lunging for her. and once he’d secured his little arms around her middle, he started wailing in her ear, the saddest sound peggy had ever heard.

 

**vii.**

 

peggy wheedled out wes’s address and dressed in her nicest. she drove out there, the roads taking her far out to the edge of luverne. the further she drove, the more she found herself wondering how he managed to make it into town most days. that far out, there were no sidewalks.

eventually she came upon a house that reminded her of her own - similar size and structure, but this one was just shy of dilapidated. on the porch sat old, dead plants in cracked, stained pots, like someone had cared a long, long time ago. there was a rusty skeleton of a car in the backyard, and a truck in the driveway that looked like it was held together with string and gum.

the porch steps creaked under her heels as she walked up to the front door. she knocked, three even raps, before it occurred to her that, if wes was deaf, there was a chance his father was, too. but as she was standing there, debating what to do, the door swung open.

he was tall, imposing - he had to be six feet, at least. is wes gonna be that tall someday? peggy wondered. the skin of his face looked heavy, and he didn’t have much hair. most of what was on his head was dark and wiry and unkempt. his eyes were too familiar to peggy, because they were the same bottle green eyes that wes had. he scowled at her, and if she hadn’t felt so threatened by it, she might’ve laughed. she’d seen that very same scowl on wes’s face.

“what do you want?” his voice startled peggy; she almost hadn’t expected it at all.

peggy gathered her courage and took a deep breath. in her mind flashed the memory of stabbing dodd gerhardt, the blood seeping through his shirt, and she straightened her spine. “you have a son,” she said, a statement instead of a question.

wes’s father snorted. “runt?” he said. “little man?”

peggy noticed his scuffed knuckles as he raised his hand to scratch at his bristly chin.

“wesley,” she said. she imagined the knife in her purse, silver and nestled amongst her compact, her lipstick, her address book.

“what about him,” he said. “you a teacher or somethin’?”

peggy breathed hard through her nose. “i’m taking him,” she said. “he’s coming to live with me now.”

 

**viii.**

 

wes slept in peggy’s bed with her, in the spot where ed once slept. she’d offered him the couch, but he only lasted a half hour in the living room on his own before he came back to her room, looking shy and contrite. they fell asleep with their backs to each other, and peggy managed to sleep through the night for once. she woke up to wes curled up tight against her back, knees against her spine.

all wes wanted from that awful house was a little case of books whose covers were falling apart and a little quilt big enough for him to fold his whole little body under. it spelled out his name in six big squares, and teddy bears danced across it. he shared what he could of it with her, and he told her which of the books were his favorites.

peggy noticed that, in the front cover of every book, there was scrawled some delicate little inscription: _wes - happy birthday - love momma._ there were some for his birthday, some for christmas, a handful for easter. when peggy saw them for the first time, she understood why wes had clung to them so hard when she brought them home for him.

they were eating cereal together one morning when peggy looked around at the orange shag carpet, and the linoleum, and the wood panelling, and the stacks of magazines, even more numerous since ed’s death. towering stacks of magazines, the ladies on the covers grinning up at nothing. the house that had felt so empty for so long suddenly felt much too full, and suddenly peggy saw herself standing on a path. behind her were the events of 1979, her whole life with ed, her childhood on aunt agnes’s farm. in front of her was motherhood, a second chance, a new life. she imagined the life that she and wes might have together, and she realized that ed blumquist’s house would be much too small to contain it.

peggy ran her fingers over the heart-shaped necklace that she hadn’t taken off in two years. she set her spoon down and reached over, touching the back of wes’s hand. he looked up at her, and she admired the spray of freckles over his cheeks, his beautiful eyelashes, his little nose.

_want to get out of L-U-V-E-R-N-E?_ she said.

 

**ix.**

 

they had a yardsale. wes helped peggy haul most of her possessions out to the lawn, and he made her a sign: everything must go. they posted fliers on telephone poles and in the windows of stores. wes held peggy’s hand as they walked around town together, and her heart soared.

shame cut through peggy as wes brought her stack after stack of magazines out to the lawn, where she sat organizing them. she gazed at their worn covers: the rosy-cheeked beauties, the beautiful gardens, the handsome homes… whatever doesn’t sell, she thought, goes in the fire tonight.

from the basement, she unearthed a box of old children’s books. they had been tucked away under a bench, which was piled high with magazines, of course. when peggy opened the box and pulled out a book, she nearly cried. when she opened the front cover and saw _edward f. blumquist_ written on the inside cover in a clumsy child’s script, she did cry.

peggy went through the box and chose the books that looked the nicest. she took them upstairs to her room, where she sat on her bed with a pen and carefully wrote _wesley knutson_ inside every cover.

she gave them to wes the morning of the yardsale, after they’d finished setting up. he looked sad as he paged through them, and said _my last name isn’t K-N-U-T-S-O-N._

_mine is,_ she said to him, even though it hadn’t been for a long time. _do you want yours to be?_

 

**x.**

 

it was going to take some doing - what didn’t? - but peggy thought she could swing it.

north dakota wasn’t california. not even close. but it would do. as long as it wasn’t luverne, peggy thought she’d be fine living in the arctic circle. it was a small town, bigger than luverne, and the tallest building was still just a three-story hotel tucked away at the edge of town. they drove around the day they got in, and peggy found the only salon in town. she pointed it out as they passed, and wes seemed to understand what she meant by doing so. he smiled over at her.

they drove around, passing houses and shops. they drove past a park, where they saw a little boy, around wes’s size, walking across the grass, fiddling with a baseball.

_how does it feel?_ peggy said that night. she was tucking wes in, in his own new, clean bed in his very own room across the hall from her own. she pulled his name quilt up to his chest. _starting over in a new place._

wes shrugged. _better,_ he said.

_you’ll make lots of friends,_ she said, smiling down at him. _i will too._ or maybe they wouldn’t. either way, it would be fine as long as they had each other. as long as they stayed together.

_i love you,_ wes said.

peggy reached out to brush his hair away from his temple. he could use a haircut before he started at school next week. she imagined sending him off in the clothes she’d bought him. some new and some old, what she could afford. she imagined him meeting the boy that they’d seen that day with the baseball, and she imagined them becoming friends. peggy had a good feeling in her heart, her chest. like maybe their second chance would turn out fine. like maybe her life would be worth something after all. like maybe she really could be someone, someone other than the “murder mistress of minnesota.” someone other than just plain peggy knutson.

_i love you too,_ she said.

**Author's Note:**

> i rewatched season two. the female characters really get the shaft, don't they? i was particularly struck by my dear peggy the second time around. peggy, who deserved better. part of what makes me so sensitive toward her is that she, in a way, reminds me of my own mother. which sucks. i wanted to give her a glimmer of hope, since she probably won't ever be happy in canon. i forget how it came up, but a friend and i said that peggy should adopt wrench. and so, the disgustingly-named "sepsis AU" was born. and this is, like, a heavily sanitized version of the sepsis AU, i think. like. it's wild.
> 
> obviously i bend the rules of reality a little bit. it's fanfiction, and it's fargo. just let it be.


End file.
